In the times where things were supposed to last forever

I was riding in my car in Paris today, and as I often do, by the windows or sunroof, I was looking at the top of these Haussmannian Parisian buildings that I like so much and which truly make Paris the wonderful city that it is.
Nevertheless in some places you have these parts of building which are not a frontage and are made to eventually be covered, one day, by a new buidling on their side. And of course these walls are not made pretty and decorated with ornaments and sculpures as usually are the « façades ». But nonetheless, in the earlier times of Paris, some guy already had this idea to use them for adverts which had nothing to do with the luminous posters that we have now, and are so frequently changing. The adverts were directly painted on the walls and meant to be left there as something immutable. So immutable in fact, that although most of them are dating from 1900 or 1920 you can still see them there with their faded paint but not so faded that you can’t read them, even now. Something interesting is the fact that some categories of products were using those places more than others. And it was precisely the case of aperitif wines like « Dubonnet » or « Suze« , very outmoded beverages which names you can still peruse on this walls, if you look well.

What is fascinating, at least seen from the world we live in today, is to think that these things were done with no consideration of time limit. But if we think of it, wasn’t it the way of this old world, after all? Doing things just supposed to be there indefinitely. Look at these old buildings in Paris, some are several centuries old, they were made of stones on very solid basis and provide you do some maintenance and façades’ restorations, you could keep them in all their beauty over and over.

Nothing is done that way anymore. Concrete, steal, glass, exotic new plastic materials, all what we do now age fast, and I would add, age badly. Stones can even embellish with the work of time. Quite the opposite, when aging, new materials just look dirty, rotten, hardened, broken, shrivelled up! Nothing to cheer up the citizens walking along these sad and crumpled façades. Gosh, how happy I’ve always been to be a « within Paris itlself » inhabitant!